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The Radcliffe Camera, the Oxford University Library, stands in the Italian Mannerist tradition. The round, domed structure rests on a rusticated base; pairs of Corinthian half-columns animate the fa�ade.

During the Medici era, this room was known as the Salotto della Guardia Tedesca, the German guard room, and was part of the private quarters of the Grand Duchess of Medici who occupied the palace’s left wing. In the early nineteenth century, Elisa Baciocchi, sister of Napoleon Bonaparte, who named her Grand Duchess of Tuscany, decided to transform the space into a reception room and between 1811 and 1813 entrusted its architectural renovation to Giuseppe Cacialli. At the fall of Napoleonic rule, the decorative project continued under Ferdinando III di Lorena who, after retaking the throne of Tuscany in 1817, wished to confirm the artists chosen by Elisa Baciocchi and entrusted the court artist Pietro Benvenuti with the ambitious cycle of paintings dedicated to the stories and endeavors of Hercules.

The decoration is subdivided into four large framed paintings on the walls - with Hercules at the crossroads, Hercules strangles the serpents, Hercules leading Alcesti to Admeto and the Battle of Hercules and the Centaurs - and ten monochrome frescoes below the vault featuring the Marriage of Hercules and Hebe fresco.

The iconographic narrative is based on the legend of Hercules, well-suited to celebrating the ruling family as per the Medici tradition, as well as the figure of Ferdinando III di Lorena who was known throughout his rule as a bringer of peace and prosperity.

The room represents one of the highest points of international Neoclassicism, firstly for the grandeur of the compositions, for which Benvenuti generated an extensive corpus of drawings, sketches and drafts, and secondly for the imposing three-dimensionality of the figures inspired by the sculptures of Antonio Canova, immersed in the sublime colors of sixteenth century Venetian painters.

The story is recounted in the Book of Tobit. Tobias was sent by his father Tobit to Media to recover a sum of money he had hidden there earlier. Archangel Raphael, sent by God to help Tobit and his family, asked Tobit (who did not recognize the angel) whether he may escort his son on his journey and, in company with Tobias’ faithful hound, they departed together. They reached the Tigris, where Tobias was attacked by a gigantic fish. The archangel ordered him to capture it and had him remove and conserve its gall, heart and liver. The innards proved to be a medicine which he can use to restore his father’s sight.

This painting shows an imaginary picture gallery hung with views of ancient Roman monuments and furnished with antiquities. In its pendant, now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the views are of contemporary Rome and the sculptures date from the sixteenth and seventeenth century. The painting s in this gallery are by the painter of the picture, Giovanni Paolo Pannini, who stands in the centre wearing a frock-coat and holding his palette and brush. He is accompanied by four other men, one of whom supports the frame of the ancient wall painting known as the Aldobrandini Wedding that another studies closely. Distributed across the foreground are antique sculptures, including the Farnese Hercules, the Dying Gaul, the Silenus with the Infant Bacchus, the Borghese Vase and the Loaco�n. Two students with drawing boards are preparing to make drawings of these antiquities.

In a dynamic pose, Death strides over the mother crouching on the ground. Her dead child is half hidden by the fluttering cloak.

Hans Christian Andersen’s (1805-1875) tale The Story of a Mother provided the literary source of Hansen Jacobsen’s sculpture.

In addition to this original plaster model, two bronze versions of the sculpture exists. One is located on the St. Petri cemetery in Copenhagen, while the other is placed by the museum that houses Jacobsen’s life’s work: Vejen Kunstmuseum.

This pathetic image of St Peter repented of his denial of Christ, according to the Gospels, was attributed to Ribera on account of its naturalism and the tenebrist lighting that makes the figure stand out against a dark uniform background. Nonetheless, it has been unanimously recognised as the work of the Sevillian painter Murillo, dated relatively early in his production, around the years 1650-1655, when the influence of Ribera, although attenuated, has a strong impact on the former.

Sorolla made portraits of the painter, Aureliano de Beruete, on several occasions. The sitter’s seated position, turned almost in profile, is customary in many of Sorolla’s portraits. The companion piece of the painting represents the portrait of Beruete’s wife.

Murillo’s Immaculada has nothing of a Queen of Heavens. Standing on a crescent moon, as described in the Apocalypse, surrounded by angels holding the mirror as a sign of purity and the palm frond as a sign of suffering, she stands in a relatively unaffected poses. Her face is pale, her eyes gaze upwards in yearning. We can sense the pain she has experienced and her mourning for her son. Quiet and introverted, she epitomises the humble anticipation of the hereafter, transfigured only by a mild smile, that is a hallmark of Murillo’s paintings of this period; the ‘Estilo vaporoso’ - the vaporous style.

The picture shows a narrative scene at the east end of the vault of the Grande Galleria in the Palazzo Colonna. It depicts the Session of the Venetian Senate under the Chairmanship of the Doge. The scene belongs to the cycle on the ceiling illustrating decisive events from the military career of Marcantonio II Colonna (1535-1584). In its form and composition the narrative cycle borrows from sixteenth-century Venetian painting, which beginning with Veronese had specialised in depictions on ceilings of historical events viewed from extremely low vantage points.

The cycle is a collective work by Filippo Gherardi and Giovanni Coli, the architecture painting and framing is by Johann Paul Schor and his workshop.

Victor Henri Rochefort, Marquis de Rochefort-Lu�ay (1830-1913) was a French writer and politician. In 1870 he became a member of the Government of National Defence, and he openly expressed sympathy with the Communards. In 1871 he was arrested and condemned under military law to imprisonment for life, then transported to New Caledonia. In 1874, he escaped on board an American vessel to San Francisco.

The Palazzo Doria-Tursi was erected beginning in 1565 by Domenico and Giovanni Ponsello for Niccolò Grimaldi, called “the Monarch” for the number of aristocratic titles he could boast and the countless debts King Philip II owed him, given that he was the king’s banker. It is the most majestic building on the street and the only one erected on three lots of land, with two vast gardens enclosing the main body of the building. The spacious loggias facing the street were added in 1597, when the building became the property of Giovanni Andrea Doria who bought it for his cadet son, Carlo, Duke of Tursi, hence the building’s current name.

Domenico and Giovanni collaborated on the monumental palace built on the Strada Nuova (now Via Garibaldi), Genoa. Documents indicate that Giovanni designed the palazzo while Domenico oversaw building operations. The first part of the scheme involved the placing of terraces into a steep hillside (height 12 m) rising from the street towards San Francesco a Castelletto (destroyed). The palazzo was conceived in scenographic terms and was influenced by Giovanni’s earlier work at the Villa Imperiale Scassi (c. 1560) at San Pier d’Arena. From the large entrance vestibule a staircase ascends through a screen of Doric columns to a light-filled courtyard. This is completely surrounded by a two-tier loggia articulated with Doric and Ionic columns. The colonnades with their dramatic play of light and shade act as an open circulation system for the different levels of the palazzo. At the end of the courtyard an open T-shaped double-ramped staircase rises through two floors to a garden entrance (destroyed) into San Francesco. This perspective staircase design adapted ideas from contemporary and early 16th-century Spanish open hall staircases.

The fa�ade is characterized by the alternation of various-hued materials: pink stone from Finale Ligure, gray-black slate, and white Carrara marble. The fa�ade bears two overlaying orders. The raised level above the large plinth bears alternating windows with their original design. Mascarons with animal-like grimaces surmount the windows on both levels. The majestic marble portal is crowned with Genoa’s coat-of-arms.

A particularly innovative feature is the unique and ingenious architectural solution, which, through the building’s successive interior spaces (the atrium, stairs, rectangular raised courtyard with respect to the portico, and double-flight staircase) creates a marvelous interplay of light and perspective.

The building constitutes the culmination of the magnificence of Genoese domestic architecture. Since 1848 it has been the seat of the Genoese municipality.

View the ground plan and section of Palazzo Doria-Tursi, Genoa.

Maximilian spent both his childhood and youth from 1529 to 1543 with his brother Ferdinand, who was his junior by two years, and his sisters in Innsbruck. In 1544 both archdukes travelled to Spain in order to stay with their uncle from then on and to take part in the war against the German protestant rulers in 1546-1547.

The scene represents St Bruno refusing the archbishopric of Reggio that Urban II offers him.

Georges Michel was one of the forerunners of the romantic landscape paintings. His oeuvre is connected to the Golden Age of the Dutch painting. His style was formed by copying the landscapes of Jacob van Ruisdael and Meindert Hobbema.

The characteristic feature of this painting is the combination of the Still-life and genre scene with some reminiscence of Beuckelaer’s monumental paintings.

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Antonio Vivaldi: Concerto in B flat major RV 362 op. 8 No. 10 (Hunt)

Behind the Queen of Sheba, kneeling in adoration, is her retinue of aristocratic ladies in waiting, with their high foreheads (according to the fashion of the time) emphasizing the round shape of their heads and the cylindrical form of the neck. Their velvet cloaks softly envelop their bodies, reaching all the way to the ground. The almost perfect regularity of the composition is underlined by the two trees in the background, whose leaves hover like umbrellas above the two groups of the women and of the grooms holding the horses. And yet Piero’s constant attention to the regularity of proportions and the construction according to perspective never gives way to artificially sophisticated compositions, schematic symmetries or anything forced.

Murillo’s fame as an artist, in his own lifetime and ever since, has rested mainly on his Madonnas, where he uses the tender female figures of Andalusia as models, introduces starry-eyed children and depicts saints in some intimate, contemporary milieu.

There are several versions of this painting in different museums.

During the same period that Neumann was working on the Trinity church in Gaibach, Neumann also developed a plan for the pilgrimage church at Vierzehnheiligen. The design that he had successfully introduced into the Trinity church, in particular the fusion of different sections into a dynamic and light interior layout, he brought to perfection in Vierzehnheiligen. The nave is formed by three large ovals with circular transepts; it projects into the choir and is set off only by circular side chapels or aisle chapels.

Neumann placed the spiritual focus - the pilgrim’s altar of grace - at the centre of the church, about halfway between the entrance and the altar. Thus the external basilica form is transformed into a centralized plan in the interior.

The picture shows a view of the nave.